Chapter 8: The Auction

On Saturday at six the warehouse held three hundred people and a bar that sold out of wine by seven.

Teddy had come as my guest and had been banned from the backstage curtain twice.

"Open it," he whispered, through the gap. "The jacket."

"It's open."

"More."

"Teddy."

He gave me a thumbs-up and backed away from the curtain.

Lots one through nine went slowly.

A weekend in a cabin sold for eight hundred dollars.

A chair I had restored for the house, a small cane-seat rocker, went for twelve hundred, and the woman who won it cried when she sat down.

Freja stood at the side of the stage with her tablet against her chest, doing sums and not looking at me.

Her face said we were nowhere near the number.

"Lot ten," the auctioneer called out. "Ladies and gentlemen, you know him."

The audience made a sound.

It was not a boo or a cheer.

It was three hundred people turning at once.

I walked out with the jacket hanging open over a white shirt.

Freja had said it was the plan, and I had decided to trust her.

The stage ran down the middle of the hall on a runway, and the chairs stood on both sides.

Women leaned toward me from the edge.

A hand touched my sleeve.

Then another touched my arm, and a woman in red said, "Oh, honey," and held on a second too long.

I kept walking to the end of the runway and stopped under the lights.

"He restores broken chairs," the auctioneer said. "He is currently unattached. Dinner for two. Who will open at five thousand?"

Paddles went up all over the room.

Five thousand became ten in about a breath.

At twenty thousand the woman in red had her paddle up high.

A younger woman at the back matched her, and the room began to laugh with delight.

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